Copeland Supply, Salvage, and Resale

by cliff.west

This is a spinoff story. It takes place after "But a somehow a most melancholy" and" Hunted Tribes". Please read those before this bit of work. I will not be recovering those stories, but re-reading them will help you fallow this story. This fiction also will be slow on the combat action.

77. Chapter 77 1 May 3052

32

Chapter 77

By Cliff

Beta and Clean up: Not done

Reviewed by Hotpoint and Cannonshop

1 May 3052

Battle of Tukayyid

Tamo Bunker

Anastasius Focht looked out over the growing number of battlefields spread over half of this planet's surface in his holograph display that was the center piece of his command center. On one side of the huge display had listed each Com Guard unit, those icons were further broken out by their areas that they were assigned to defend on this planet. There also was a small number near each of the Divisions names ComStar liked to use to help manage a battle of this magnitude. The data on this helo display also listed the percent of the units that had been converted to "Clan Buster", Royal level of equipment, or newer mechs designs being fielding for the first time in combat like the Grand Crusader. ComStar knew a lot about Royal level equipment that the SLDF had fielded, but they had very little of it in the stockpiles that had been left behind with the SLDF Exodus. The factories needed to make a lot of the designs had been slowly repaired over the first century of ComStar's existence, but they had been put into Mothballs and never made a single new machine after their rebuilding.

This had not been seen as a major issue for ComStar for a few hundred years. At least not while the House Lords were slowly blowing themselves back into the Stone Age with only a few spy games being played on them needed to keep the backwards slides going on the correct glide path. The expense of maintaining Royal mechs, much less making more of them had been out of the question for many of the following members of the First Circuit of ComStar. All of that had changed with the coming of the Clans to the Inner Sphere. Well, it had happened a little before that, but this was a very closely held secret at the highest levels of ComStar.

The man now known as Focht at first had said some not so kind words about a certain hidden group on the edge of space out by the MoC when he had been showed the production ramp. Now that head start in refitting the Com Guards had been pushed by ROM, and they had been doing this pushing forward of the whole First Circuit with report after report of ROM's failures to contain this still unknown group. Then there had been the reports coming in from across the board about the growing tech recovery that had not been centered on any of the known copies of what the news called "The Helm Core." The actions of a single company called Copeland Supply, Salvage, and Resale had been able to change the huge organization called ComStar seemingly without knowing of the risk.

Focht had been able to start to change the total amount of Star League grade weapons within the Com Guards, and he had not even been the face of the person who had been asking for the needed funds to do that pushing. Amazingly fast Focht, ROM, and the First Circuit had been able to get the Warship rebuilding and repairing program back on track. At the same time the needed budget lines for adding more updated and less manpower intensive designs of Warships were now coming off the drawing board and into the building slips. That had cleared up the backlog for the design teams and greatly improved their morale finally seeing their work moving forward.

Next, but not a concurrent step, Focht had been able to get the military dropships production back online. And soon those facilities were making real numbers of Confederates to first augment and then replace the Leopards in the Com Guard's support fleet. As soon as the shipyards had the needed trained personnel? They had expanded and started making Lion class dropships, to compete against those being made by MMM, as well as the Unions and Overlords classes of Dropships. Those last two designs of mech carrier dropships were badly needed to support the growing Com Guards. New Titan class carriers would soon be coming online, but there had been issues with them, that had been a surprise at many levels of ComStar. Who would have thought that a group like ComStar would have to deal with corrupted data files of this scale? The first hull of that old design had "only" been started to be built in April of this year, after over two years of delays.

It would still be many months, to almost a year, before the first Colossus class dropship was going to be launched. It would be even more months before the first hull plates were cut for the prototype Lee class dropship at the O'Neil shipyard. It would be up to another four years before the Com Guards would get its first base model of the Lee dropship. Focht had been very surprised when those two designs were briefed to him by members of the Archive department.

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After so many years within the ComStar run Com Guards, and his many years spent in one military unit or the other. Focht had thought that he had seen and had at least been exposed to every design of military or civilian dropships that the Star League had been able to put into mass production. Those two "new" massive dropships would have been a huge help moving all of the Com Guard forces to this planet to fight the Clans. But instead Focht and his staff had to mainly rely on civilian cargo dropships to move his combat units around a massive part of the whole Inner Sphere. Then the support teams would have to wait and repair any damage until after landing on the planet, which was instead of getting the needed work done during transit. It was a waste of time that needed not to have happened, if they had enough battlemech carrying military dropships to do that moving of so many divisions in so short amount of time.

While everyone in the ranks of ComStar had still been looking at the nice big shiny objects, which were being built or planned on being built in the Terra system. Focht had looked at his "smaller" assets under his preview as the leader of the Com Guards. First, he had ideas drawn up about converting as many battle machines as his support troops could do internally with his new repair budget. Each of the Com Guard Divisions had their own low level plans on improving the capability of their own commands.

Most of the work that Focht was directing, was centered on using a huge cache of extra light Vlar 300 class power plants that had been "found" in storage bunkers on Terra. These were refits that could be done in only a weeks per machine, per repair bay, that were available to do the work. Besides the limiting factor of the number of Vlars, were the number of "extra" factory trained crews to do the work. Those were not the only updates that Focht had quickly rolled out for the Guards, but they all fell under the program now called Clan Busters. That had not been the name Focht had put on that project letter head, but the name change had proven to be useful, and not just on the political fronts within ComStar.

With all of the plan for Royal SLDF class machines held in the archives of ComStar just waiting to be called up and used. Focht had been able to leverage some of Terra's slowly reactivating manufacturing capabilities being paid for by the First Circuit, and the now incredible amounts of second-generation weapons coming on the open market around the Inner Sphere by hook or by crook. All was not as Focht would have liked with the number of Royal grade weapons on hand or other special weapons known to be being looked at by the House Lords. Despite all of the effort that ROM had put in and the funds flushed out the airlock, things seemed to be moving slowly on those fronts to get weapons tech that had not been used by the old SLDF.

The agents of ROM had only been able to pick up a small handful of the amazing Bear Slayer class ER PPCs, and the information needed for the first factory to be built to produce them. But that new factory had only been up to making small production runs measured only in the dozens per month, and only up to that level over the last part of the month starting in April of 3052. Still, he had been able to put an amazing number of updated Black Knights, Champions, Hussars, Wyverns, and most importantly updated 100ton King Crabs on the battle lines.

Focht used ever ton of high tech supplies that were coming out of the military parts factories in the Sol system to help update the heaviest combat units first. Almost every mech heavier than 40tons had been refitted with what where now referred to as Freezer class heatsinks around the Inner Sphere. In Fochts opinion anything smaller than that would just be a waste of a pilot and machine when fighting against the superior technology that the Clans could bring to the battlefield. Well outside of some specified roles that were major force multipliers, or new built combat machines, and Com Guards Division command teams had their own ideas on what might be useful.

This large number of new generation of heatsinks had been helping to deal with the glut of older style ER PPCs and even the oldest style of PPCs from the Age of War, which had found their way onto the open market and picked up by front companies of ComStar. Even Terra only had one factory that could make new H class PPCs before 3045, but it could only work at a very low rate measured in a handful per year. It had been hoped that this factory would be supporting the fitting of IER PPCs that should have been made, but they were not going to let those H class just be left sitting around in the parts yards.

The thought of those powerful IER PPC class weapons not being available to Focht in the huge numbers you would think, made him frown even to this date. Focht had been in the meeting when Primus Waterly had been told, in detail, about how much better these newer weapons that were coming out of the MoC and Wolf's Dragoons were. Even how good they were when compared to what could be made on even on holy Terra.

One of the upsides in that meeting, had been that she had ordered every production facility that could make the H class PPCs opened and brought fully online. Then she had ordered that other combat unit production help address that tech gap issue. The major mothballed mech production lines on Terra and Mars were not fully back online, yet. That would take at least another two or three months or middle of this year. But many of the smaller production facilities on Terra and Mars were back online and turning out some numbers of new machines for Focht to call on.

Focht thought that he was going to need every one of those large to massive size mech production facilities to replace the losses that he knew were coming in his future for "his" Com Guards. At least ever new machine that would come off of those lines would be equal to Royal quality, and or a few new battlemech designs that had never been seen by the House Lords or the Clans before. Still, you had issues with some of the companies on Terra, like with Krupp. They were a huge company even by late Star League standards, but they were having problems getting out of the idea of hand making the Tornado battle suits. Granted Krupp had a lot of hands to do the work, but it made for less PA(L) suits to be fielded than the numbers that had been promised to all of the Com Guards.

When ROM had briefed that many of the House Lords had been able to get not only battle suits into production, but that the designs were more powerful suits than what the light Tornado or Night Hawk design could bring to the battlefield. That revelation had caused a tidal wave of questions to come from the members of the First Circuit. It was only lucky that ROM had an idea on how to fix this issue, one that didn't revert to blowing up dozens of production lines around the Inner Sphere. Well, there was a first time for everything.

Thanks to some help from deeply buried ComStar friends within the headquarters of large weapons companies in the FWL. ComStar and the Com Guards would have a suit designed called the IS standard, but with a few different cosmetic changes to the helmet and shoulders fitted at the end of the production line. This armor suit was being built on Mars to keep it out of the eyes of those still on Terra. Money had already been given so that a "proper" tech based ComStar 1ton battle armor suit could be made. But Focht would not even have many of those "lower" tech, but heavier suits, in this fight against the clans. Well besides the few dozen that he had been able to get with his own money and using contacts he personally had.

It had taken everything Focht had to get his hands on the 500 sets of Tornado class suits that then had needed to be hand fitted to the users sent to Tukayyid. He had gotten "all" of ROMs Night Hawk suits, but that number was less than 100, and Focht had an idea that ROM or someone in the First Circuit was playing games with him on those numbers. Still those few hundred suits would be a great help in countering the Clan's fielded Battle Armor, and those sets of PA(L) were fitted with the heaviest weapons that the Com Guards supply department could find. When they got those weapons, the pilots of those light battle armor were trained on how to do head hunting missions on top of the other missions the more experienced PA (L)'s pilots had already been trained in.

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With this thought Focht's eyes went to a digital report on training of units still on Terra. There was a limit to the skill level of those units, and some had not passed the redeployment tests. All those left behind units would have added to this battle, was going to be the body count. Thinking about what was left on Terra got Focht to thinking about things he had been vetoed on.

Focht was not happy about why some of these new combat units that were so close to being in full production, and he also was not happy about the history of some of the designs the Com Guards were going to be fielding. Then again who would remember the Jackrabbit or Dragoon designs of battlemechs, outside of those few that were mech fanatics? He like the updated Nexus that the frame was based on the older Jackrabbits. The numbers of Grim Reapers flowing into the Com Guards should be huge in a few more months. The same was also true of the Raijin and Grand Crusader classes of battlemechs. All of those new designs had only come to this planet in loads measured in dozens at a time from factories on Mars and Terra. Focht and his staff had been promised whole battalions or level IIIs of these new designs each month that they could delay this battle with the Clans. Those slow moving of new designed mechs were not the only issues with weapons coming from Terra. They were just symptoms of the problems.

Focht had no idea how the Draconis Combine, of all people, had been able to get their own line of Bear Slayers into operation before ComStar could get one online for their own use. What he didn't know, was that Terra and ComStar had a lack of brain trust when it came to PPCs. They could make an H class PPC or the slightly older tech Blakenburg model 200 ER PPC. But no one on Terra, Mars, or in the organization now known as ComStar had ever designed a new PPC from scratch.

The Draconis Combine had been in a totally different boat than ComStar currently was sitting in. The Combine had been trying for over a century to design new PPCs. They wanted one that would not blow up if you looked at it sideways when power was applied to it. With that background to draw on, working with some of the best tech spies within the Inner Sphere, and having access to key parts of the Helm Core all had allowed them to connect the dots. Besides the Lord's Light 2 that went into production in 3037. They also were working on a project that was currently called the Snub nose PPC around the watercooler. Still both of those PPC's were all made in house for the Combine. Then you add in a few examples of the Bear Slayers being on hand, ISF spies in the production areas, and the Combine were able to jump over ComStar in the PPC tech tree.

Focht, ROM, and most of the First Circuit would have to take heart meds, if they found out that by the end of 3052 or the start of 3053. Bear Slayers, Lord's Light 3, Broadsword, and the Sun Hammer classes of IER PPCs would be flowing into combat units around the Inner Sphere. Even the Capellan Confederation would get their Ceres Arms Warrior ER PPC into service, which was "just" a copy of the Blackenburg Technologies 200 weapon, into production for their house units. There even was a group within the PPC R&D department of LAW that had "A hold my beer" moment, and they were trying to strap on a PPC capacitor to the back of a Bear Slayer class weapon just to see what would happen. They pitched it as a way to almost close the damage tech gap with clan grade ER PPCs. But really, they just wanted to see what it would look like when it blew up in the company's test rigs.

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Focht had to spend a lot of willpower to look away from those numbers about his ground forces and the line of thinking it let him go down while he stood there. Unfortunately, it only made him look back at his limited space assets that he could call on for the upcoming battle for who would control Terra. If the Com Guards only had a few more warships in this star system? Then Focht would have been tempted to challenge at least one of the landing zones the clan forces were going to be using in this proxy battle.

Then again, that might open the door for the rest of the clans to bring all of their warships into the role of orbital fire support now or in the future. Starting a warship-on-warship battle was a can of worms that Focht was not ready for. No, he would keep his two warships were they currently were. Currently the few warships that the First Circuit would let him use, were covering his jumpships that still needed to recharge their jump drives. After the last of those few dozen jumpships had left this star system, the warships would remain to bear witness to the coming battles. Those few warships should have enough firepower to spread word of the results of this "battle", even if the clans pulled a sneaky and decided to upend the game instead of keeping to the rules they set. With a slight shake of his head, Focht remembered that you can only fight a battle with what you have on hand.

Now all Focht had to do was win, you know the small things that make life so much fun to work through. What Focht did not know was that the recent battles had depleted the numbers of the best warriors, combat machines, and more importantly it had depleted the supplies needed to keep the rest of the forces in the field. Focht had spent a lot of time talking with the Wolf Khan when the then iLKhan had not wanted to talk to him at the start of this invasion. He had not been given a lot of details, but there were things that you can pick up. That is, if you knew what to look for and knew how to drop the right leading questions.

One of the things that Focht had picked up was that Clan Wolf had a better idea of how to plan for supplies to support their missions than the other clans. Focht knew that Ulric Kerensky had not wanted to invade the Inner Sphere, but politics had forced him to join in on the assault or lose power for future needs. The loss of even more power after not wanting to invade the Inner Sphere would have been suicide for him as a leader and the rest of "his" Wolf Clan. Before the death of the last iLKhan, due to that crazy FRR pilot bought time for the Inner Sphere and opened an opportunity for Ulric. Focht had known that all of the clans, and that also included the Wolves, had been burning threw their expected supplies a lot faster than planned rates in the first waves of the attack.

When the Clans had come back to the Inner Sphere and Ulric had been voted to be the new iLKhan, Focht had thought that the Inner Sphere had dodged a bullet. But the old wolf had played his cards very close to the chest. Well, that is until Ulric had flat out told Focht, that the end target idea was to take and put Terra under the management of the Clans. Still before Focht had left the Clan flagship, he had found out that even with the new units and more supplies, along with what two new clans had brought with the iLKhan. ROM had reported that it would seem that the latest battles with the House Lords were even bloodier for the Clans than before. The Clans were still winning, but they were bleeding supplies, people, and leaving wrecked machines in their path.

What Focht had been able to work out, in his own mind at least? It was that the Clans that were most affected by this latest rounds of combat? They were mostly from the group's warriors that had been the ones that were still not used to having to keep a massive amounts of combat supplies ready for their fighters to use when things went wrong. They were having problems coming to grips with the fact that they were not doing short trials between trying to take limited objectives. It was these facts and habits that was something that Focht was planning on exploiting in this proxy battle for the birth planet of man.

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The Smoked Jaguars were still very much smarting after the humiliating failure they had endured when they had landed on the planet Luthien when they arrived at the Zenith jump point of this star. Khan Edmund Hoyt had to move around many of his ground forces, and even some of his aerospace fighters along the way from Luthien to Tukayyid. He badly needed to fill out the open positions in his three "best" remaining front line combat Galaxies. He had to play this shell game because those three Galaxies were so well known to the rest of the Clans. If he didn't use those, then the other clan leaders would know that the Smoke Jaguars were in deep trouble.

Hoyt did this shell game by more or less raping other units of combat power and pilots even if they were not as good as the pilots they were replacing. This had the effect of lowering the overall skill levels of those three units, but not by that much in his opinion. Clan warriors were very well trained, and every one of them had at least some combat experienced to claim. But there was a lot more that goes into making a fighting unit than one's on skills at gunnery and the control sticks. You needed to be able to fight as a unit, and that is one of the hardest things to both develop and maintain for a combat unit. With the renewed invasion, this had been driven home repeatedly and still some of the Clans had a hard time accepting and understanding this rule of warfare.

After the Smoke Jaguar's first real bid for the honor of landing and starting the fight for Terra. Hoyt had quickly cut deeply into his order of battle to have the right of first landing on this proxy battle for Earth and keep the Wolf's in orbit as long as possible. The first cut after removing his warships had been all of his third Galaxy of ground fighters. It was a closely held secret that this Gamma galaxy was the weakest, and the least skilled of the three major Smoke Jaguar units Hoyt had brought with him to this star system. If things went badly, or he could make it look like the barbarians were cheating….again? Then he would be able to bring Gamma Galaxy down to blast the Com Guards into scrap. All without having any political fallout coming from the rest of the Clans.

Then Hoyt had to cut down the last of his Aero Fighter Stars to beat the Nova Cats one more time to be first on the ground. That one cut had been the one that had hurt the most for his plans, Hoyt had been counting on those fighters to provided close air support for his mechs and elementals. Hoyt had no idea what game the Nova Cats were playing in their bidding, but there was no way that they would be able to match his Jaguars with their last bid on landing zones. It was just one more thing that he was going to have to keep an eye on.

The leader of the Smoke Jaguars was just about to let the Nova Cats have the honor of the first landing instead of doing another cut, when the Lore Master of the Nova Cats conceded the winning bid to the leader of the Smoke Jaguars. Hoyt was even happy with how he had forced the Wolves into only taking the scraps that he knew would only be left behind after his forces won their two battle objectives first and became the Ilclan.

What also was a closely kept secret, was that the Jaguars were deficient in long ranged systems as a rule, and they were very short Gauss Rifles and LRMs weapons much less the ammunition needed to supply them to be effective. Not only had the battles on Luthien run those stocks down to a critical level. The loss of so many dropships had cut deeper on the strategic level and that had affected how much Hoyt's clan could resupply by the time this proxy battle was going to take place. They also had been running short of working ER Large Lasers and ER PPCs trying to help with the supply problems the Jaguars were having. Now the decision to take more combat units instead of bringing more techs was starting to affect the Smoke Jaguar units when all of the Clans had returned to the Inner Sphere. Who would have thought that the shortage of labor caste support personnel was now impacting how the Smoke Jaguars warriors could fight?

The first steps needed to counter this supply issue was that most of the Omnimechs and Omnifighters were outfitted with closer ranged weapons. This was done even if the pilots and jocks would have preferred longer shooters to fight with. That should have been an easy fix for the tech crew to accomplish, but for the fact that the Smoke Jaguars were now also short Omni style mechs. Over a third of the Jaguar's second galaxy and all of his third galaxy that Hoyt had brought were made up of Battlemechs and not Omnimechs.

Refitting "normal" battlemechs would take longer, and many of them would not see the techs in time before making contact with the Com Guard ground forces on the planet. So, they would have to go to battle with very little in the way of ammunition for some of their weapons. That was where Hoyt had wanted to use those aerospace Omnifighters, and the bombs that they could carry. Besides those bombs, most of them had been fitted with a huge number of 5cm pulse lasers and other short ranged non ammunition based weapons to slice up these religious barbarians like some many freeborn targets. But the Nova Cats had forced the Jaguars to cut all of their aerospace assets.

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Even as Edmund Hoyt smiled as his Overlord C was coming into land, he knew that the future was bright for his clan despite their recent troubles. That was the last smile that the Khan of the Jaguars would ever have for the rest of his life. When it was all over? The Jaguars did not take any of their objectives that they had been given to be judged the winner of this contest. When it became apparent that this was the case? The Smoke Jaguars were only able to lift off of the planet with just twelve percent of the total forces that had landed to fight the Com Guards. Khan Hoyt was not among those that lived to leave this well laid ComStar trap. It was rare that any Jaguar that held a ranked position of binary or higher command made it off world at the controls of the mech or in the suit that they had landed with. Many of the remainder didn't live long enough to make it to the jump point even with the medical capabilities that the clans lavished on their warriors but not their other castes.

The Smoke Jaguars were not the only Clan spanked by the Com Guards on the planet. This was a recurring theme with most of the Clan's forces that had risked landing combat forces on this planet. The Wolf's had some of the exactly right types of units that the Com Guards tactics were not as much of an issue for them to handle. It was an issue that some of them could not handle, but it did not affect most of Clan Wolf's battle plans to take their two objectives. They would be the only Clan to take both of the assigned objectives that they had been given. It only cost the Wolves a lot more than they had planned on, but not that much more. At least not when you compared those numbers to what the other attacking clans had sustained. The Nova Cats were the only group that lost less combat power than the Wolves in the battles on this planet. In fact, the Nova Cats loss the least of any of the attacking clans, not that they got off scot free and they also didn't take either of their objectives.

That had been because after landing, the Nova Cats had done something that none of the other Clans had thought of to try. They had forted up on their landing zones soon after landing, and they had waited for the Com Guards to come to them. Whenever one of the more Crusader minded group had demanded a circle against this order from the leaders of the Nova Cats. That group would be given leave to exit the landing zone and fight the Com Guards as they saw fit. The Clan forces had run right into the ambushes that the leader of the Cats had known must be waiting on them. The leaders of this clan remembered what the Combine, Dragoons, and Kells had done to them on Luthien. That experience and acceptance was not universal among even this clan. Those small units were cut up, and the Com Guards had kept up a slow but steady lobbing of heavy artillery missiles into the Nova Cat's landing zones. Most of the ones that would have hit a dropship or other important areas were shot down.

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By the time that it was time for all of the clans to leave Tukayyid, only those that were more Warden in their mental leanings had remained as the survivors of Clan Nova Cat. All of the clans would have plenty of time to rebuild their combat forces with the almost "truce" now in effect between the Clans and the powers of the Inner Sphere. It was expected that the Nova Cats and Wolves would be the first to finish rebuilding to pre-invasion levels with personnel and equipment. This would not make those two clans loved by the rest of the Clans on so many levels.

In a major stroke of luck for ilKhan Kerensky and for Clan Wolf in general. Most of their Crusader faction within his parent Clan Wolf that had deployed to the Inner Sphere where now not an issue. Most of them had fallen as they had defeated the 278th ComStar Division in what was a blood bath on a massive scale with both sides not giving or asking for quarter. Very few of the rest of Clan Wolf were surprised that they had all refused to become bondsmen to ComStar or the Com Guards after being blown out of their mechs. Some had done so in some very inventive ways, which had called into question by some the idea that Crusaders could not think outside of the proverbial box. But some within the Clans thought that maybe many of them might have a genetic disorder or other fixable issues that needed to be done to their genes when the AARs were collected by other clans. Even among the clans there was a thing as being too stubborn.

On the 15th of May all clan forces had left this star system, which now marked the limit of the advance of all clan forces for the next fifteen years going towards the goal of Terra. It would not stop all of the fighting between the clans and the Inner Sphere. Still the world that they left behind was a burnt and blasted ruin, but it also held the many victorious divisions of the Com Guards walking on its surface. It would take almost a full year for all of the battlefields to be cleaned up from the aftermath of this one conflict that just happened to be spread out over most of the planet's surface.

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Star Captain Tod had thought that being moved up to a listed frontline Galaxy was the next step in him getting in line for a blood name. Everyone knew that the Great Clan Smoke Jaguars were going to take three front line galaxies in this proxy fight for Terra. To be one of those chosen by the Khan of his clan to defeat these religious teachers that played at making war, should be a fine feather in his cap and codex. Tod thought that maybe if he did well enough, he might be put in for a blood name for one of the four blood houses his codex said he was eligible to claim. His only other major concern was getting a high enough kill count to get him a line or two in the Jaguar's official Remembrance.

Oh, how wrong he had been in that line of thinking before he had reported to his new Galaxy. First Tod had been told that the Mad Dog that had kept him alive so far in this wave of the liberation of the Inner Sphere from the Scavenger Lords was now not his. That omnimech would be assigned to one of the two other galaxies that were going to be used in this attack. Blood name warriors had first call on any omni mechs that could be made ready for this next battle or anyone else's in the fleet. That the Mad Dog was fully operational already would "force" it to be moved to a "better" warrior. That meant that any omnimechs where for the warriors that had already proven their worth by winning a blood name in the clan.

After finding himself in the mech bays of his "new" Galaxy, Tod found his new mech waiting for him just as he had been told in his digital message. Not surprising, but it was still very depressing at what he had seen. Tod found out that his "new" mech was a second line machine, and it was lighter than what his prized omnimech had been. It had taken him a few days to get used to his "new" 55ton Vaper Eagle class battlemech. Star Captain Tod had looked into calling a trial of grievance for being assigned a mech that was only good enough for the outfitting of garrison units or in the hunting of bandits. The Galaxy commander had granted Tod's meeting requests and he had not been surprised about the issues he had brought up. He had simply showed Tod the stack of similar requests, but told Tod, that he would have to wait his turn to try his luck against their Khan in his trial. That information had been hard to take for the Clan Warrior. Tod was a warrior used to using energy weapons and not the weapons needed for combat in the political battlefield.

There was nothing much that Tod could do but wait and get ready to fight the Com Guards and work with the rest of his new Star in his "new" battlemech. Where he had been given a "real" clan made battle mech, the rest of his star was made up of recovered and repaired captured or recovered Inner Sphere mechs. This unit was also just a group of warriors pulled from other units as replacements to fill empty beds. Also, they had to give up their comfortable Omni tech machines and given these repaired mechs to fight in. There were only two reasons that Tod had "been issued" a real clan made battlemech when he had arrived in this Galaxy. One reason had been his rank as a Star Captain, and the other had been that Tod had gotten to his new unit before their limited supply of this class of battlemech had run out.

When star captain Tod's bidding box mounted on his belt had shown that his unit had been bid away by his Khan? Star Captain Tod had no idea if he should be happy or sad. Yea, Tod was conflicted. But he was a very angry and conflicted person with a battlemech. Luckily for him or not so luckily for Clan Smoke Jaguar. Tod had not needed to wait long after the landing had started, before his galaxy was called down to support the bogged down Alpha and Beta Galaxy in taking the two Smoke Jaguar objectives. With the bid now broken, the Khan of Smoke Jaguar had lost a great amount of honor, but what really mattered was winning both objectives. With reinforcements needed by both of these units, the Galaxy Tod belonged to was broken in half to support both beleaguered units in a hope of breaking out and taking the two objectives.

Star Captain Tod had no idea, until he had landed, that he was going to be supporting Beta Galaxy. That Galaxy was still working on fighting their way out of the Racice Delta and not doing that great. Tod found out that saKhan Sarah Weaver had died in combat already, and she had been replaced in command by the current Delta Galaxy commander who had been serving on the Khan's staff while recovering from a bad punch out. Tod had no idea that they were about to start fighting the 207th Com Guard Division (The Pounders). All he knew was that these lowly free births were embarrassing his clan, and he would not let that stand.

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Tod looked over the short digital brief that he had been given along with the rest of his "new" Cluster. The cowardly enemy had been hiding in deep holes under the water just waiting to ambush the warriors of the greatest Clan in the universe. They had refused to fight with honor, and Tod was not surprised at this notice. Nothing Tod had seen in this, or other battles, had changed his mind about these lowly free births. Then Tod had made contact with his first Com Guard unit, and he had still not been impressed with them.

Four 5ton Gabriel class hover scouts that had dated back to the time of the Great Father had come out of the swamp seemingly out of nowhere. They had foolishly closed in with his star and they had fired off their pathetic short ranged 5cm energy weapons with little effect on his star. The only issue had been that the pilot in the Archer had fired off one of her only eight reloads for the LRM 20s that her mech was refitted with. They had not been able to load her mech with "real" weapons and the support group had even fallen back on using captured Scavenger Lord made missiles. And still she had only been able to get eight total volleys loaded, four if she used both sets of LRM-20s in one massive volley of death.

Star Captain Tod had berated her over the use of those missiles on such small and lightly armed targets. Still, she had successfully killed one of the very fast hover craft, but the three survivors were able to start to try to pull back from the clan star. That was when Star Captain Tod found out how deeply ComStar had fallen from the true path of the warrior and the Great Father, at least as seen from the eyes of a clan warrior. Two light mechs stepped out of hiding and started to engage the clan star before the hover tanks could be made combat non effective.

Tod had no idea what these two new mechs were, and they were ones that had not been seen on the battlefields in this liberation effort. Only the battlecomp on Tod's old machine knew what they were, and when it had started beeping for his attention. Tod reads the data twice before red fully clouded his vision. His old mech had been loaded with an equally old war book in its battlecomp, one based on the data that the units that had fought under the Great Father had used.

With a rigidus smile, he yelled into his radio. "Usurper!"

Then Tod fired all of his weapons at the light Com Guard mech. It doesn't matter to him that the two mechs were out of range of a lot of his weapons. Even an Age of War tech AC-2 class autocannon could reach out a long way and touch you without that much worry of any returning fire at them. It might not hurt that bad when the 30mm shell did hit you, but it had longer reach than even a lot of clan tech weapons. Then again, the Clan star had a lot of second generation 8cm pulse lasers and the Jackrabbits were called light mechs for a very good reason.

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Adept Jacques Stosskopf had been sent here by Percenter Mari Reenery to work on closing the circle around this part of the Smoke Jaguar line. They had been very close to crushing this part of Clan Smoke Jaguar, but the sudden appearance of reinforcements had at first forced the 207th Com Guard Division to fall back to a pre-planned fighting line that had not been used. That was where Jacques came into the fight. His unit had been a reserve unit to be used only if something unplanned happened in this part of the line. And it was a given that when you were fighting the clans, something unplanned for would happen to you.

Adept Stosskopf reviewed data that was sent to him from one of the three surviving hover scouts that had been scouting for him. The last Gabriel hover tank had reported that the two mechs assigned to this scout level II were not going to make it. The Adept made a sour face at this data. He had found out the history of the Jackrabbit while he had been working at Blankenburg Technologies on Terra as a test pilot. To see that the Clan Star had focused on those two Jackrabbits was not that much of a real surprise for him.

Jacques had not been a fan of the long shooting but low damage output of the light autocannon on the Jackrabbit, but he like the Joker better with its old tech PPC. But he had higher hopes for the modification called the 9R2 that replaced the autocannon with an ER PPC or one of the new Blake's Wrath improved ER PPCs that should be available in a few months.

Still the Adept had to smile, the new Jackrabbits might be weakly armed death traps when fighting the clans. But his 55ton mech was one of the early run of prototypes for the Grim Reaper that also would soon be available for the Com Guards in large numbers thanks to the massive late Star League grade factories on Terra. He loved this machine, and the Adept had even turned down the slot in one of the assault weight prototype Grand Crusaders. There were only four of those new assault class mechs on the whole planet, but Jacques was a gifted medium class mech driver.

This Level II had not been part of this division or any other division before it had landed on this planet. Adept Jacques Stosskopf had been lucky that all of the unit had drawn on equipment from Terra or Mars before they had arrived on this planet. This act had allowed this whole unit to be fitted with at least SLDF militia level of equipment and not the age of war tech some units still had to rely on to fight the clans on Tukayyid. Over a third of the Com Guard fighting units on Tukayyid were "just" age of war designs, which were just like what the house lords had used at the start of this invasion.

Thinking about "his" unit, Jacque checked the mixed LVL2 and smiled at what was at his command. He had a pair of Lancelot LNC 25-01s and a Crab CRB-27 acting as his mech wingmen. These four battlemechs were backed up by a pair of 70ton Fury class heavy tanks. Now you would think that using tanks this massive in a swamp was a bad idea, and they did have a few well-known limitations while fighting in this type of environment. Well, they would be limitations, if a lot of time had not been spent on mapping out areas that track tanks and sometimes even wheeled tanks could be safely used. If things went well? Those two heavy tanks could add a lot of firepower to this level II. But if things went even a little bit sideways? Then they would have to be left behind by the rest of the Level II to more or less fend for themselves. Not that there was not much that two 70ton tanks would normally be able to hard press them while working together.

The Adept was brought out of his funk by a remote sensor that the scout level II had left behind that had started singing out to him. At first, it was not that much info for the Adept to use. But the scout unit had been able to get a good read on the Clan Star heading towards him already. With the now cross queued provide by the remote sensor, Jacques had an idea on what to do. This Level II commander hit the button so that the underwater comms lines would reach to three other mechs and to the two tanks that looked like bushes, trees, and part of a levee.

Jacques fought to keep his voice level as he got ready to update the rest of the unit, it was good thing that this was not his first battle. Until getting "the call" to come back to Terra, he had been protecting ComStar bases at the edge of the Inner Sphere. Still, this was by far the largest battle he had been in. When he had five green lights to say that the rest of the Level II knew that he had wanted to speak he was ready.

In a calm voice. "Okay, they are not Omnimechs that we have to deal with today, but you can bet that they are packing only the most top of the line weapons gear. Don't get cocky, and then Blessed Blake will see us to victory. As long as we don't shoot ourselves in the foot."

Jacques released the communications button to close the line and he finally let a snort out now that no one else might now hear it. He was one of many within the Com Guards that were not a true believer in "The Word of Blake", but Jacques knew that he had to keep those within the higher parts of ROM, ComStar, and more than a few within his unit happy. Besides words were cheap.

Now all Jacques had to do was wait until he had something to fire at, and as one of the top mech test pilots that Blankenburg had seen over the last century. That was one thing that he had no problem doing, after all he had learned that war was long bouts of boredom with a few moments of sheer terror oddly mixed in. By now Adept Jacques Stosskopf like being bored, it helps with his heart rate. It was so much better than being shot at, bleeding, or putting your friend's body parts in black plastic body bags.

Still, it was almost a surprise when the five enemy battle mechs came walking through the mech foot deep mud and sand coming towards him. It had seemed like hours after the surviving hover scouts had made it past this Com Guard unit's current location. With the fore knowledge provided by the scouts and the very finicky and limited remote sensors. The Adept gave each member of his unit an enemy to fire on just for them.

Adept Jacques Stosskopf could have just picked one or two enemy mechs and blown them off the battlefield. That tactic would let him concentrate firepower of his unit, but according to his briefing that could cause trouble from the first steps of any small scale skirmish. It was best to make the Clan forces break their own rules first, before blowing them apart when it best fit the Adept. Doing something like that was a risk. But for the morale hit to this group of Clanners would take? It was almost as good as damage to any of their battlemechs. And when the clanners broke their own rules, well Jacques had a plan for that also.

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Star Captain Tod left the two smoking wrecks that had been Rim World designed battlemechs from before when the founder of the Clans had left the Inner Sphere. After his unit had taken care of those two light mechs. He could have gone two different directions, but Tod decided to follow behind the fleeing hover scouts. Tod only kind of noticed that the water was getting shallower as they walked, and that the ground was firming up under his mech's wide metal feet. The only thing that he really noticed was the warning that said that his jump jet intakes had become fouled while he had maneuvered his machine in this rotting swamp's deeper waters. Tod had no idea that the water was that deep, until he had made just one miss step. The loss of the jump jets didn't bother him that much, as so far Tod had used those devices very rarely in combat.

Even with the distraction of reading about his damaged jump jets, Tod was able to react quickly to the battlefield around him. It was an ambush and even with clan genes, the enemy got the first shots off at his Star. It was simply because the Com Guards were the only ones that knew this was going to be a battlefield. The locals had no idea that the clan star had been delayed arriving due to them having alpha striked, so many times at the pair of light Com Guard mechs.

The Soloham mechs they were using might have been refitted with clan weapons, but the over worked supporting tech crews had not had the time to outfit them with any Clan grade or even old SLDF grade heatsinks. It had taken some time for these refitted mechs to cool down, and more than a few had been in danger of cooking off their own ammunition due to a short lapse in judgment. But by now they were back to running cool, at least for now they were anyway.

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As Adept Stosskopf came up out of the water with thick dark mud sliding off the smooth angles of his prototype mech. The Adept fired at his self-assigned target, all the while he knew that one of his mechs had not been able to rise out of the mud with the rest of the mechs of this level II. He had thought about all the mechs that the Smoke Jaguars had brought to face him when he had handed out targets. Stosskopf thought that the one unknown type of enemy battlemech must be a clan second line mech. His thinking was that it would be harder to kill than the rest of the enemy, even if they were all heavier than that unknown mech was.

With both of his mech's arms raised for battle, the Adept fired the left arm mounted Holly Six rack and his right arm mounted 8cm extended range Blackenburg Technologies laser. These arm mounted weapons were followed a half a heartbeat later by the right torso mounted Holly 20 rack, and the 5cm Blakenburg pulse laser the Grim Reaper was packing. All of this firepower went towards what his warbook had no idea to call a Goshawk. He was not able to hit with all of those weapons, this was war and not a game or a simulation. The 5cm pulse laser turned a lot of muddy water into steam, but the 8cm laser, two SRMs, and a dozen LRMs found their target.

Between the two Lancelots, they were able to score with one PPC, and two 8cm lasers on their targeted Marauder and Archer. Now both Com Guard mechs were running hot as they used their speed after firing to become at least a little harder to hit now that the battle was fully engaged. The single Fury class tank was able to put a gauss round into a walking Warhammer's right torso. It was not a lot of damage for total exchange of weapons fire from two weapons of war of this great size. Still that one gauss round hit on the Warhammer had taken the armor in that location down to the level of only needing to hit it with a mech grade machine gun to totally breach. That light of hit would be enough to remove the last of the armor in that location should worry even a clan born mech jock.

Star Captain Tod took the challenge from the unidentified 55ton mech that had risen out of the mud and fired at him without warning. With a smile on his face, Tod selected his target with his high tech targeting computer and pulled the trigger. The smile was not him using the help of a rare targeting computer that most other clan mech warriors thought of as cheating. It was that the rules for Zellbrigen had been put on hold for this battle. There would not be any one-on-one dueling with these free births for the Smoke Jaguars.

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Jacques had to fight from flinching as his MacArthur II anti-missile system started sweeping the sky of incoming enemy missiles. There was no way that it could take all of them down, not coming from two different mechs.

"Well, two can play that game," thought the Adept.

The Com Star Adept currently had more players on this part of the battlefield than the clanners did. He would not even need to say a word on the radio, as his people automatically went about the plan to kill this clan star of mechs as fast as they could. All they had to do was live threw it, while killing the enemy mechs. That was not going to happen that easy for Jacques, not with a Goshawk and a clan updated Archer that very badly wanted to kill him.

All of the Com Guard mechs had kept moving to make it harder to be hit by the clan mechs, and thanks to their special map. The Com Guards knew were not to step in the local area of the swamp. The only two Com Guard combat units that were not moving were the two tanks, one of them was still not known to the clans about being on the battlefield. That would change now that it joined into the fight by firing its massive main gun. The Archer had fired both shoulder mounted LRM 20 Racks at the LvL II commander hoping to take the Unknown mech down as fast as possible.

The Warhammer and Riflemen unloaded four clan grade 8cm pulse lasers at the Lancelot that held a single finger sticking up painted on the right side of its slab shoulders in a well-known gesture. The clan modified Marauder fired its own two 8cm pulse lasers, and his class five mech scale shotgun at the remaining Lancelot. That was a lot of clan grade 8cm pulse lasers to have to weather, but the Com Guard mechs did weather it with maintaining mostly intact mechs when that exchange of weapons fire was over.

That was an okay way to fight the clan in the Adept's book, and now the gloves were off for the rest of the Level II. The Fury tank that had not fired and remain completely hidden from the clan forces took their time and the gunner put the heavy reinforced nickel iron watermelon right into the center chest of the Warhammer. The second Fury tank had not taken as much time as his until now silent partner, but they still hit the Warhammer dead in the center of its chest with their second shot of this battle. The 70ton mech was known for all of the firepower that it could pack into one machine. But to do this? It was a little light on armor for its weight class.

The two metal slugs removed all of the armor off the center of the clan refitted machine, and at the same time. Those two hits had also removed about a third of the metal bones that held the machine together for the last hundred years or so. That was a bad hit no matter how you looked at it, but the mech would have survived even that amount of damage. It might not have been still able to effectively fight, but it would have been able to be put back into battle. That is if the right spare parts could be found back at the clan run supply and repair points.

Ahhh, that same old story that the rest of the Inner Sphere had been dealing with for the last few hundred years, welcome to the party you trashborn jerks. As the modified 70ton battlemech was blown backwards, it would seem that the clans were not short of machinegun ammunition. A full ton of that type of ammunition had been stored in the location that had just been abused by the two Fury tanks weapons fire. The clan pilot auto ejects system saved her from the battlemech coming apart under and passing mech fragments threw her body by going the shortest distance possible.

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The young pilot of the 50ton Crab was now both angry and embarrassed at not being able to rise with the rest of his Lvl II to start this battle. But now the sloped top mech smoothly rises out of the brown water, well like a crab in a mud bank. Then its clam shell like coverings at the ends of the long arms opened to expose the arm mounted RAMtech 1200 8cm lasers to the rest of the world to their hell fire. The pilot had risked a slight overheating issue and the nose mounted 5cm Ceres Arms laser joined the battle with those RAMtechs. The twin heavy beams reached out to the exposed side of the Rifleman double teaming the Lancelot with a single finger salute painted on its front. Even with the help of the well-known and extremely capable 650 RND targeting and tracking system. The 5cm laser turned out to be more of a hazard to his fellow Com Guards pilots, than it was to the clan enemy mech he had been firing at.

The Rifleman designed battlemechs were known for four main things. One was the over and under 8cm lasers and 50mm autocannons they had as main weapons. The second thing was that it was a very hot running mech even compared to other hot running mechs. And that was even before the even hotter running clan grade 8cm pulse lasers were fitted to the beast by over worked support crews. Third was that it also was a great anti-aircraft weapons system, but the fourth was that it was fitted with very week armor to be on the front lines of the battlefield. The old SLDF quartermasters had thought of it as "only" a support mech, and that it would not be used in front line combat against other and less specialized mechs.

Between the weapons fire from that Lancelot and the Crab, the rebuilt 60ton machine died under the hammering of heavy energy weapons. Its death could have been caused by the RAMTechs, or Krupp Model 32's, or hits from the Kinslaughter PPC. But it also could have been all of the heat that the pilot had put his machine under by doing so many alpha strikes with the 8cm pulse lasers and class 5 shotguns while he had been in battle.

Still dead was dead, and this pilot had not lived long enough to be ejected from his wrecked battle machine standing ankle deep in water and mud. Those two clan mechs did not die alone on this battlefield. They had been pumping 8cm pulse lasers and shotgun rounds into one of the Com Guard machines, and even a very talented pilot could not avoid that much incoming weapons fire in such a short amount of time. Not even when their mech had a rated speed of 97kp/h and a pilot good enough to use it very effectively.

The PanzerSlab type 5 armor on the old Krupp made machine had taken a beating from those energy weapons. And a few too many of the cluster rounds had made it through that armored skin, and they had damaged the massive and bulky Hermes360 extra light but extra wide but light weight engine that powered the Lancelot. Then both of the side torsos and the center of the mech became so much high tech confetti, and its pilot pulled the chicken ring and she took a ride high into the sky over what remained of her Lancelot.

The only remaining Lancelot class battlemech was exchanging twin 8cm pulse lasers and autocannon shots with the clan weapons packing 75ton Marauder. The clan pilot was pumping out its own waves of destruction at the Com Guard mech, but the lack of an updated heat management system was causing the clan pilot to ride a very high heat curve like a cowboy on a Brama bull with a tooth ache. One that he was not used to having to deal with for so little damage output for a clan mech.

After rushing with firing its twin 8cm pulse lasers and its LB-X type autocannon. The Marauder C had to drop back into firing both its arm mounted 8cm pulse laser, and then firing one 8cm laser and the lower heat generating autocannon. The arm mounted 5cm lasers on this Marauder C had been replaced on this mech with a CASE system that was made out of hope and prayers. But it still was a risk to the ten reloads for the autocannon the mech had been packing in when it left the last support base before being ambushed.

So far both the clan mech and the Com Guard mech were still working on finding a major breach in each other's outer armor shell. It was only a matter of time, luck, and good gunnery before something important was broken on one of these two old war machines. It would be that or the fickle finger of fate would step in and decide.

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Adept Jacques Stosskopf was hard pressed to be fighting against or at least trying to control the battle with the two clan piloted machines doing their level best to kill him. This battle was testing the Adept skills as both a pilot and a gunner like he had not been tested before. The Goshawk was faster than his Grim Reaper. Now you might not think that eleven kilometers an hour difference might not seem like it is that much, but it was making things….complicated for Jacques. But the modified Archer was slower than the prototype mech and speaking of the Archer.

The Adept did a stutter step to try to throw off the aim of the LRM boat, that didn't help that much as the 70ton mech launched forty LRMS at him. Jacques frowned under his helmet as his McArthur II stop firing way to soon, and "only" six of the missiles of that high tech avalanche were stop before the system had run out of ammunition. Then twenty-six missiles hit him from spreading down the shoulders going down to his mech's toes. It was soon followed by an 8cm pulse laser from the "real" second line clan mech.

The only good thing for Jacques, so far, had been that the Grim Reaper's O/P Scanoptics 400BP TT&S had shown him that the jump jets on the Goshawk were fouled by debris of some kind. That still was not going to help him that much in this fight. But anything that would degrade the enemy mech and it's pilot, was a good thing for Miss Jacques's little boy.

"Could someone please keep that Archer off me?" The Adept did not bother waiting on a reply as he fired his own LRMs and 8cm laser at the lighter and faster of the two enemy mechs. The last hit from enemy fire had taken out the loading system for his Holly 20 racks, and now he had to worry about dumping the now useless, but still dangerous to him, the remaining long ranged missiles.

Besides the amount of metal double teaming the LVL II commander, his plan had worked out as the Adept had wanted. The targeting of the Warhammer and Rifleman had been done for a reason when the Clanners had broken their own combat rules. The LVL II had one more combat machine than the Clan Star held. But the quick removal of those two enemy battlemechs, even at the loss of one of the Lancelots, had left the Adept with a two machines advantage. The two freed up machines that could now helped to flip the odds back into the Com Guards favor.

As soon as Adept Stosskopf had sent the message out on the radio that he needed some help with the LRM boat, the now freed up heavy tanks started to move to provide fire support to the remaining Lancelot fighting against the hot running Marauder. This actions freed up the CRB-27, who now came wading through the mud and water to challenge the 20ton heavier Archer for some….. love. All it took was putting one of his two fired 8cm RAMtechs lasers into the wide back of the old machine to get its full and undivided attention directed at the lighter Com Guard mech.

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Star Captain Tod slammed his fist against one of his side displays in deep frustration. The last round of hits from this unknown mech had taken out two of his machine guns, but that was not what had caused his outburst of anger within his cockpit. One of the dozen LRMs that the surat mech had fired at him, had knocked out his targeting computer into so much dead weight for his mech to have to carry around at least for the rest of this battle. That had not been the only damage his second line mech had endured, and the loss of one of his third generation heatsinks would make his job harder to kill this free birth. With that outburst done, Tod aimed low and worked on trying to slow this Com Guard mech down to give him a better chance to end this free birth once and for all.

With a savage grin he notices that the free birth was dumping missile ammunition, and that told Tod that the other machine had lost a major weapons system. He pulls the primary trigger and the 8cm pulse laser and all three of his 5cm pulse lasers fired at the unknown mech all in one go. The wave of heat that flooded this second line mech's cockpit was a physical impact to Tod's body, but as a true born clan warrior he let it flow over him without saying a word. Tod's mech's diagnostics system said that he was close to passing out, but he was not to that point of physical distress….. only very close.

If anyone would have been able to ask the battlecomp on this mech on what to do next? It would have said the best move would have been to pull back and call-in reinforcements. And that would have been the smart move, if this star captain would have been fighting other clan forces? But there were "only" some free birth scum out there, and he was a Smoke Jaguar warrior working on getting set up for a blood name. Besides the star captain would not pull back as long as he could draw a breath. Even with a hit on the lower left leg of the new Com Guard design with the 8cm class laser, the Com Guards also kept fighting. The 5cm pulse lasers had missed going off target to the left and right of the running enemy machine.

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Jacques was currently not managing this battle as he fought a like massed mech that outclassed him in more ways than he could count. He was a little surprised when the soft voice of the Crab pilot came over his built-in speakers. "Hey! I think this Archer is out of missiles! At first, he was only shooting his right shoulder pack at me. And now he is only using those over charged and ranged 5cm lasers of theirs. If I can get some help? Well, we can drop him easily at longer range."

The damaged voice of the remaining Lancelot pilot came back in reply to the youngest member of this LVL II. "We just drop that Marauder. Terminator and I can start heading that way now. Sore Toe lost a track, and his turret is jammed but they are still alive."

When the 70ton Archer was brought down by a back shot by a pair of "Fur burners" and a hit from the M-9 Gauss Rifle. The pilot of the Vapor Eagle finally started pulling back from this part of the battlefield. But it was a fighting retreat being performed by the clan pilot, and the Crab had lost its left arm to a lucky strike of 5cm laser fire. But now it dawned on the clan pilot that he was both out gunned and out massed by what remained of this Com Guard combat units. It was just too bad that before the Star Captain could make it more than 500 meters from the spot that this dawned onto marble head, his right leg came off at the knee. That was thanks to a second hit in that one location by the 8cm Blankenburg made laser. When a recovery crew came by to recover the Com Guard pilot out of the first Lancelot? They also checked out this second line clan mech, but they only found a clan pilot that died of a self-inflected knife wound.

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The Com Guards might not have been able to get that many of the Bear Slayers onto their machines in time for this battle, but they were about to have a windfall of clan weapons to work with afterwards. While the support crews were augmented by combat forces that were cleaning up those battlefields and recovering Com Guard and Clan mechs alike, more than a few surprises were found. A battle tracking log was kept in all of the division and higher command centers, and those had been the first items collected for any future study as well as being used to help with the cleanup.

The Clans attacking Tukayyid were granted Safcon and Hegira when they asked to leave the planet and totally concede the battle to the Com Guards. The retreating Clans were able to take only those mechs that they had attacked with, but that could still walk to their landing zones under their own power. Elementals suits were a different issue, and they were just allowed to carry their buddies to the nearest dropship to keep from any small firefights from starting when emotions were still running so very high.

Even before the last clan dropship had left the planet's surface. The recovering of tanks, mechs, and other weapons from the spread out battlefields had been started in earnest. The first and largest collection points turned out to be the objectives of those attacking clan units. The recovered items were separated into groups after being brought to those central collection locations. The largest group within those collection points were the areas assigned to receive any weapons that had been used by the Com Guards. Then came the area for Omnimechs, then areas were soon set up for Clan Battlemechs known as second line machines by the bondsmen that the Com Guards had collected.

Then two new areas had to be set up to receive the odd finds that didn't fit into any other groups that had been planned on. There looked to be machine designs that were known to be used by the House Lords, but heavily outfitted with clan tech level of weapons and support systems. The last area in the collection points held age of war machines that held very little, if any, clan or even Star league grade weapons within their hulls. Many of the later mechs were used by the Com Guard repair teams as a source of repair parts to fix the battered Com Guards units. But other recovered mechs, like the Victor C battlemech, became a very sought out mech by ComStar mech pilots as replacements or as an upgrade to their existing rides.

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ilKhan Ulric Kerensky sat on his flagship, the Sovetskii Soyuz class warship now called Dire Wolf. He was thinking about the battle that Precentor Martial Anastasius Focht had just given the combined forces of the heart of the Clans of Kerensky. Ulric knew that this "victory" for his ideals were going to cost him, and it might cost him dearly in the coming months to the next few years. The ilKhan was alone in this office on the gravity deck of this great but very old warship. The age of this warship was what had really brought the point of the latest briefing he was reviewing into clear focus.

Every Clan had an intelligence gathering service to call on, but some were better or even a lot better than others. Ulric had found that size also didn't mean that it was effective for the missions that needed to be done. But as the old saying goes, that it will take a very long time to get from New York to London in a rowboat. Some of the clans even had a different idea on what they should be collecting with those Watch services.

The Smoke Jaguars for one, were more interested in finding out about what the lower classes might be doing or not doing than they were gathering information that could be used in combat. One of the things that the Dragoons had made very apparent to those that paid attention to the reports they had taken the time to make. It was that Intelligence gathering and analysis were key to winning on any battlefield you might find yourself on. So when Ulric had "only" been the Khan of Clan Wolf. He had made sure that "his" clan's Watch was both large, well-funded, and capable to support all types of battles that the Wolves might find themselves involved in.

First, Ulric had reviewed the political reports from the Watch about this battle. Some things were clear cut and others were so much not clear cut. The turn that comes to mind about some of the reports, is clear as Mississippi mud. Ulric had even made a few quick notes to be sent back to Clan Wolf's Watch office. One of the odd things Ulric wanted them to look more deeply into, was what was going on with Clan Nova Cat. He knew something was up, but as with most dealings with what most thought of as the oddest clan. It left you asking more questions than you had when you started talking with them in the first place.

Then there were the battles or massacres at the Dinju Pass and the Dinju Heights by the 323rd and 299th Com Guard Divisions. That had ended the leadership of Khan Hoyt and the most hardcore of the Crusaders known to be within Clan Smoke Jaguar. The battles in the river delta had done in the rest of the Crusaders, as well as gut the military power of that once very powerful clan. It had taken the direct contact of the captain of the CSJ Veiled Huntress, the Texas class battleship that also was the Beta Galaxy's Flagship to save any of that clan's Touman. That was both good and bad, mostly good, but it was going to cause issues back with the home clans. One of the questions would be if/when one of the Home Clans would call for the absorption of the Smoke Jaguars. Some would ask if Ulric would shed a single tear for that clan. The answer would be listed as….. complicated.

All across the planet called Tukayyid. The Crusader's had fought bravely and died just as bravely under the guns of the Com Guards. Clan Wolf had been hit, even with all of the planning and supplies that been laid in to win this fight. It had cost Clan Wolf a lot to take both of their assigned objectives from the Com Guards. But the loss of one Vlad Ward and the rest of "his" Crusaders that had followed him into the guns of Com Guards on Pozoristu Range and the taking of Skupo would have to be handled carefully.

The last thing Uric wanted was for them to be held up as martyrs or looked up to by other members of Clan Wolf. Some of the attacking clans won technical draws, but that was more as a balm to soothe some very bruised prides. Without even trying that hard by Ulric, the Crusaders in all of the clans that had been used in the invasion so far, had been as good as gutted by mostly the ComStar military. That still left those same misguided Crusaders sitting back in Home Space, and only a fool would think that they would not try to make some hay over those losses. Then again, there was a reason why they had not won a spot in what they had called Operation Revival.

On the purely military side of things. The Wolf's Watch report had given some clues on how the Com Guards had been able to pull off what to most clan members would have thought of as a major miracle. And so far, there were not that many reports of these improved ER PPCs that had been found outfitting the FedCom, Combine, and even some Mercenary units. But what the Com Guards had fielded in this fight were just as strange for the hide bound clans to accept. Were the Clans had only fielded one new mech design, and that one had been a clan update of an Inner sphere Wolfhound in the last ten years. The Com Guards had as many as 20 different types of updated mechs that the Clans had seen starting at the end of the first few waves of the invasion.

ComStar also had come up with some tricks all of their own to surprise the attacking clan warriors. The Com Guards had updated the old Black Knight design with better weapons and even a sword to take advantage of the clan warriors that didn't like to fight in close. Even the always under gunned Champion design had been turned into a real killer of the battlefield. It now came with more 8cm lasers, and almost more importantly. A lot of them now came with the heatsinks to use them effectively.

Ulric gave a snort and then his eyes were drawn to the report of another mech that had come as a shock to his forces. The paper thin armored 30ton Hussar had somehow exchanged its first generation extended range 8cm laser for a LB-10x class autocannon, and at the same time it had doubled the armor that covered its small hide. That type of combat unit had gutted Elemental point after point that had tried to close in and kill the "well known" light mech.

The 100ton knife fighter of the King Crab had also been radically changed by ComStar. It now had been turned into a heavy sniper that could kill even clan heavy omnimechs before they could get to close to the low slung beast. The less massively changed ex SLDF mech was thought about next. The already deadly close quarters or city fighter that was the 45ton Wyven, but somehow Focht had turned it into a lot better close quarters' fighter.

And yet still, those had not been the only surprises that had been given to the clans by what most clanners thought of as just a communications company or church group. After all, those had been old SLDF militia grade designs, and the Clans had done many refits of their own to those same types of mechs back in the Pentagon worlds. Now what was disturbing were the totally new mechs that could only have come from factories that the Great Father had been told had been destroyed before his Exodus. Still seeing mechs that matched the databases for the Jackrabbits, Joker, and the hated Dragoon had made many within the Watches to take heart medication.

So far, the heavier Rim World designed Dragoon had been in very small numbers compared to other mechs in its weight class. Numbers that were small enough, that they could be marked up to being "just" battlefield salvage that had been recovered, and then slowly repaired over centuries. But seeing those three different mech types had caused many a clan warrior to charge to their deaths trying to destroy them once and for all. Ulric was not above thinking that Focht had planned on just that type of reaction happening to the clan warriors, and that he and his combat commanders had used them to bait traps for the unwary. Still, it was very disturbing to see them and then to see the firepower they brought to the battlefields on that planet. The last part, about the firepower of the Dragoons had not been in any records that the Watch had been able to dig up in all of the databases they had seen, yet. Ulric wanted to know why that data had been not found. And still ComStar had even more surprises for the clans.

This 55ton Grim Reaper class battlemech was reported to be better than most royal mechs in its weight class, and then there were the reports on this assault class Grand Crusader. It was not well received, but it was a totally new assault class mech with a lot of updated weapons. Still those four mechs had caused more than one issue with both the Jade Falcons and the Smoke Jaguars. The reports coming in on mechs that seemed to be called Nexus and the Raijin by the Com Guards were not as impressive. At least not after the first dozen reports had come in that were based on shock more than real thinking. After the shock value had been rubbed off, they seemed to be easy pickings for Clan mechwarriors that had not been spooked by their surprise unveiling.

Ulric had to give himself a loud snort as some of the brain fog that had been creeping up on him cleared away. Oh, how could he forget one other type of item that had been seen on the battlefields of this planet? It was not one, not two, but three different types of battle armor that had been used in roles as diverse as attacking scout mechs on patrol, city fighting larger mechs, counter battle armor missions, and the oh so enjoyable to deal with headhunter attacks. Yes, the Inner Sphere was turning out to be a lot harder to conquer than those that had followed the Crusader leaders had been able to both understand and accept. But when Ulric was being true to himself, it even had shocked the Warden faction of the clans. That would not stop Ulric from bringing this up as often as he could, at least until it started to lose its witchcraft like power.

The ilKhan closed his reports and he lowered the lights so to ease the strain on his eyes and mind. The fighting might be over, or at least over in the drive to get closer to Terra. But the battles were not totally over for the Inner Sphere to be fought against the clan forces. The fighting was not even close to being over for one Ulric Kerensky. He was betting that most of his next battles were not even going to be on the battlefield, but in the chambers of the Khans and briefing rooms.

Ulric knew that he just needed to stay ilKhan long enough to make the results of these battles stick with the rest of the clans. After the blood bath that most of the invading clans had endured on this planet and others. They would need time to rebuild, graduate more warriors of all types, and they would not want to come back to soon. Still Ulric had to make more plans, counter plans, and counter-counter plans if he wanted this truce to stick for any length of time. A small smile comes to his face as he worked on those plans. Well, he was a Kerensky after all. And those kinds of things should be second nature to him, or he should not have that particular last name. Sometime later, he would wake up when the jump alarm sounded threw out the great, but old warship.

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Primus Waterly had planned what was called Operation Scorpion for years, the only changes had been updating the information Focht had gained about the Clans. ROM had even put forward an updated list of planets that were to be attacked while the HPG network went down. This communication outage was the first move of this Operation. Not all of the planets that were going to be attacked were in clan space. That was mostly thanks to Waterly having a long memory about people or places that had caused her…issues in the past. And besides a few key people within ROM had wanted to add a few planets to the list of missing targets all on their own.

When it came time to launch the attacks? Only one planet was going to be added to that list that would see a large main line forces used in the attack. A full dozen other worlds would have other types of actions launched onto them using much smaller forces. Even Waterly knew that when they were successful in attacking this one planet in particular. ComStar would not be able to make it a fully hidden world, like the Lost Five that so few within ComStar knew about. Still, the newly added planet on the target list, was in the right area to act as a quiet support base for any actions that might be needed to help along with the Third Transfer that was key to many within ComStar.

The planet was also close to a large, growing, and cutting-edge manufacturing powerhouse for a large section of the Inner Sphere. On top of that, the targeted planet also had some production capability of its own already active without ComStar needing to invest money, time, and tech support in its development. The kicker for its name to be put on the attack list by Waterly and the other power players within ROM. It was also near an area of space that had contact with an unknown "outside" group that had foiled too many of ROM's plans over the last few years.

This time ComStar was not going to play around with small units in the attack on a planetary scale. They were going to drop a big hammer and take the targeted planet as fast and as hard as was needed to get the job done. A very heavy hammer that had been carefully hidden from Focht or anyone even remotely close to him. If Focht knew about this size of a unit they were going to use, not counting the level of weapons tech, and the skill of the pilots.

Focht had been taking anyone that was just above green as grass for his combat units to be used in this proxy battle. It was a very good bet that Focht would have order them to immediately deploy to Tukayyid ASAP, that is if he knew about them. There were very few planets on the edge of the Inner Sphere or even most within the Inner Sphere, which should be able to stand up to more than three full Level IIIs. To use that much firepower on a mostly forgotten world, until a few years ago, should be a case of overkill. Deep down she was already planning on how this planet would help with her plans for the future of ComStar. Ahh the plans of mice and in this case woman. And then you can count in a case of counting chickens before they hatch.

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Notes

Notes on Battle of Tukayyid: I used the old Tukayyid book for this. On page 27, it shows that you needed to roll an 8+ on 2D6 to get a royal or clan buster tech mech. So, 66 percent of the Com Guards was made up of TRO 2750 or age of war mechs (TRO 3025/39) in OTL. For this AU? This has dropped down to 6+ and with a few updated new machines not seen before. So, in this AU "only" 20 percent of the forces on Tukayyid would be using age of war tech to fight the Clans but still mostly fitted with DHS.

Battle between mix stars of second line mechs and Soloham mechs: (Goshawk/Vapor Eagle 55ton) Warhammer C, Marauder C, Archer C (8 reloads per LRMs), Riflemen C vs mix Lvl 2 (4 mechs 2 heavy tanks) Adept Jacques Stosskopf in prototype Grim Reaper, 2 LNC25-01 Lancelots, Crab CRB-27, 2 Furies. Vaper Eagle and Archer vs Grim Reaper, Warhammer and Rifleman vs Lancelot, Marauder vs 2nd Lancelot, Crab (fails pilot rolls gets it on the second volley, 2 fury class tanks. The Clan forces drawn from page 26 of the Tukayyid source book 1685. I did change ultra for uniform LB-X to help show supply issues and needing only one type of autocannon rounds.

Clan refitted battlemechs available for Soloham units within the Inner Sphere: Warhammer (replace PPCs with C LPL, replace SRM 6 with streak SRM 6, ML with ER ML, SL with ER SL) Battle of Twycross page 46. Riflemen (remove RT and LT laser, replace LL with C LPL, replace AC/5 with clan LB-5x) Battle of Twycross page 46. Marauder (replace PPC with C LPL, replace AC/5 with Clan Ultra AC/5 add CASE) Battle of Twycross page 48. Thunderbolt (replace LL with C LPL, replace LRM-15, replace LT ML with C ER LL, remove SRM-2, replace LR MG with ER ML and 2 ER SL) Battle of Twycross page 48. Shadow Hawk (replace AC-5 with clan LB-5X, replace LRM-5 with Swarm LRM-5, replace SRM-2 with Streak SRM-2, Replace ML with ER ML) Battle of Twycross page 48. Atlas (replace AC/20 with Clan Ultra AC-20, replace LRM-20 with Swarm LRM-20, replace LT SRM-6 with Streak SRM-6) Battle of Twycross page 49. Archer (replace LRM-20 with swarm LRM-20, replace ML with ER ML, Battle of Twycross page 49. Victor C replace AC-20 with Gauss Rifle, replace ML with ER ML, replace SRM-4 with Streak SRM-4 (Battle of Twycross page 49].

This one is a little short, but it was a good spot to split from the next part.